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Discuss The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Social Science

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This essay will look at how social scientist explain human behaviour scientifically, and the merits and limitations of the applications of the scientific method in explaining such behaviour. The first part of the essay will focus on the major components and the goals of the scientific method, while the second part will focus on the difficulties that social scientists have encountered and how they have been complying with the scientific principles.
Before going into further details, the terms social science and science should first be defined. Social science refers to “the study of society and the way people live” (Social Science, n.d.), while science refers to “a particular subject that is studied using scientific methods (Science, n.d.). The major components of the scientific method are concepts, classifying, theorizing and model building.
The usage of concepts allow us to “ask precise questions”, so that we can be “able to answer these questions with precise answers” (OUHK, 2017, p.8). Before using a concept, we need to clarify or define the concept, since it is important for social scientists to use “broadly similar definitions of concepts” and “explain clearly any variations which they adopt” (ibid, p.8).
However, the clarification of concepts has its shortcomings. For example, when clarifying a concept, various acceptable …show more content…

In spite of the fact that “there is a lot of regularity in what people do”, so that many regular patterns of behaviour are repeated in similar ways, people can decide what to do or not do completely based on one’s own choice. These two distinct opinions emphasize the structure of society and the importance of human agency respectively. They are equally important, but that makes social scientists unable to predict correctly what will happen, as influenced by the unpredictable decisions of human individuals (ibid,

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